They all met again at luncheon however, Ruth rosy cheeked, excited and red-eyed but on the whole none the worse for her journey back into the land of forgotten things.  As Larry had hoped the external stimulus of actually seeing and hearing somebody out of that other life was enough to start the train.  What she did not yet remember Geoffrey supplied and little by little the past took on shape and substance and Elinor Ruth Farringdon became once more a normal human being with a past as well as a present which was dazzlingly delightful, save for the one dark blur of her dear Rod’s unknown fate.

In the course of the conversation at table Geoffrey addressed his cousin as Elinor and was promptly informed that she wasn’t Elinor and was Ruth and that he was to call her by that name or run the risk of being disapproved of very heartily.

He laughed, amused at this.

“Now I know you are real,” he said.  “It is exactly the tone you used when you issued the contrary command and by Jove almost the same words except for the reversed titles.  ‘Don’t call me Ruth, Geoff,’” he mimicked. “’I am not going to be Ruth any more.  I am going to be Elinor.  It is a much prettier name.’”

“Well, I don’t think so now,” retorted Ruth.  “I’ve changed my mind again.  I think Ruth is the nicest name there is because—­well—­” She blushed adorably and looked across the table at the young doctor, “because Larry likes it,” she completed half defiantly.

“Is that meant to be an official publishing of the bans?” teased her cousin when the laugh that Ruth’s naive confession had raised subsided leaving Larry as well as Ruth a little hot of cheek.

“If you want to call it that,” said Ruth.  “Larry, I think you might say something, not leave me everything to do myself.  Tell them we are engaged and are going to be married—­”

“To-morrow,” put in Larry suddenly pushing back his chair and going over to stand behind Ruth, a hand on either shoulder, facing the others gallantly if obviously also embarrassedly over her shyly bent blonde head.

The blonde head went up at that, and was shaken very decidedly.

“No indeed.  That isn’t right at all,” she objected.  “Don’t listen to him anybody.  It isn’t going to be tomorrow.  I’ve got to have a wedding dress and it takes at least a week to dream a wedding dress when it is the only time you ever intend to be married.  I have all the other things—­everything I need down to the last hair pin and powder puff.  That’s why I went to Boston.  I knew I was going to want pretty clothes quick.  I told Doctor Holiday so.”  She sent a charming, half merry, half deprecating smile at the older doctor who smiled back.

“She most assuredly did,” he corroborated.  “I never suspected it was part of a deep laid plot however.  I thought it was just femininity cropping out after a dull season.  How was I to know it was because you were planning to run off with my assistant that you wanted all the gay plumage?” he teased.